1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to a user authentication security system, and in particular, to a computer implemented security system and method for utilizing user selections of and gestures manipulating a displayed object to authenticate the user.
2. Description of Related Art
A variety of processes have been utilized to authenticate a user of electronic systems such as a computer, email or a web account. Often the user is instructed to provide a user identification number or name (user ID) and a password. The electronic system then determines whether the user ID is in a database of user IDs and then determines whether the password provided by the user matches the password stored with the user ID in the database. Sometimes the user is also required to provide a number periodically generated by a hardware or software token which is compared to what the electronic system expected from an internally generated number using a parallel token. Other types of authentication systems are utilized in many different applications.
Another type of security feature is to determine whether a computer may be masquerading as a user. That is, a computer may be generating thousands or millions of user IDs and passwords to try to improperly access an electronic system. A captcha (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) user authentication test may be utilized to authenticate that the user is a human rather than a machine. A variety of such user authentication tests have been utilized including displaying a set numbers and characters of various sizes and orientations with a disjointed background. The user is then requested to enter the displayed numbers and characters. A human can usually discern the displayed numbers and characters whereas a computer typically cannot.